Shoah - Movie

Concentration Camps

In a memorable and much cited passage in Cultural Criticism and Society (1949), Theodor Adorno, the eminent German philosopher who spent a good portion of his life in the US following the Nazi takeover of his homeland, famously said: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today.”

Antonin Artaud Documentary (English subtitles) - 1 of 2

An Andalusian Dog 1929

About the Final Paper

The student will submit a paper about 10-12 pages in length (Times new roman 12, double spaced). The topic will analyze one concept studied in class, incorporating elements from our readings, videos and class discussions. At this level, the students must be able to create and support an argument about French Culture and Civilization. The paper should have an introduction and a conclusion. The paper must cite at least 3 of the sources studied in class.

Chapter 9.

Chapter 9: “1919-1940.”

Read this chapter, paying special attention to the following themes:

1. The “Mad years” (151). 
2. The new cultural landscape after the war (152-153). 
3. The split of the Left, between communism and socialism (154). 
4. The big depression (156). 
5. Who was Maurras? Ultra-right and para-military organizations (157). 
6. The main characteristics of Leon Blum’s presidential period (160-162). 
7. France as a divided country (162). 
8. Germany takes over (163-165).

Avant-gardes.

Avant-gardes. 

Several writers have attempted to map the parameters of avant-garde activity. The Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the earliest analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia (The Theory of the Avant-Garde). Surveying the historical, social, psychological and philosophical aspects of vanguardism, Poggioli reaches beyond individual instances of art, poetry, and music to show that vanguardists may share certain ideals or values which manifest themselves in the non-conformist lifestyles they adopt: He sees vanguard culture as a variety or subcategory of Bohemianism. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggioli's study. The German literary critic Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974) looks at the Establishment's embrace of socially critical works of art and suggests that in complicity with capitalism, "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work".

Bürger's essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art-historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (born 1941). Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry (2000) critically argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.